I'm planning to conduct a toy workshop - the idea is to help people make some common toys. I would appreciate all ideas for sucha workshop. Shouldn't be too technical. Ideas with/without arduino are welcome.At the moment i'm thinking of building simple to comple pull back cars based on motors and some simple cicruits. Any other ideas? or any thoughts on these ideas? I want something for kids 8-14 to explore and learn.

I currently use lego. But want to use other things for this workshop. Lego is expensive where i live . Mindstorms NXY costs 600$I plan to use simple dc motors , wheels, etc. I do have enough arduino clones. I'm looking for simplified ideas without programming.

That's why I suggested Bricklink: you can buy individual pieces, rather than entire sets at retail.

There are lots of people who buy sets and part them out for sale there. Since the pullback motors are not very interesting to Bricklink's main market (adults looking for special pieces for their own designs), you can probably find them cheap.

Unfortunately, Lego has discontinued (most of??) the sets that came with electric motors, so the prices on them went up. But there might still be some deals to be found.

I'm pretty sure there are some Bricklink sellers in Asia, so you could get parts without spending vast amounts on shipping.

I always used to start my students with a bendy wire game. The one where you have a loop (ground) and try to get from one end to the other without touching the wire (signal ). You can make it from a wire coat hanger and a block of wood.

The great thing is that it is so easy to expand it. Just start with an LED lighting up when it is touched, then a buzzer. Then have it latching on rather than momentary.

Then add end stops (two more inputs) so you can reset the LED and then time the run. Transfer the time to processing, have a high score table. Have touches add a 5 second penalty. The variations you can build are endless.